Back in the driver's seat, I loaded my phone with local maps. Then, carrying my bag and the rifle, I exited and locked the rover.
The cover of the external cargo hold squeaked as I eased it open. It took me a couple of minutes to lift my bike out without making too much noise; by the time I was done, my bandaged arm ached badly enough that I thought about returning for the pain injectors.
I relatched the cargo hold. From another hold I removed a few water pouches. I crammed those into one of the bike's two panniers; my overnight bag fit into the other. The rifle I lashed to the bike's crossbar with some tape I'd borrowed from the first-aid kit. With one last glance at the other rover, still crouching silent and dark, I slowly pushed my bike down the street, keeping to the edge of the road and to whatever shadows I could find.
After several minutes I reached the terminus of the streetlight's illumination. Glendora remained asleep and still, apart from one quick scurry by some small animal crossing the road back by the hotel. Before me the desert extended into blackness beneath an overcast, starless sky.
I got onto the bike and flipped on the headlight. Then I started the motor and put a spray of dust between me and the town of Glendora.
* * * *
After the first half hour my adrenaline subsided. Racing ever forward into the headlight's unchanging wedge of illumination, unable to hear anything beyond the bike's low hum and the rush of air past my ears, I fell into a sleep-deprived trance broken only by the occasional sharp scents of night-blooming plants—and by moments of heart-racing panic when a boulder or drop-off suddenly darted toward me from the darkness. Every fifteen or twenty minutes I woke enough to pull out my phone to check my position and course.
About two hours from Glendora, my eyes were jerked open by violent bouncing and shaking. The ground was scattered with jagged rocks, from pebbles to shards the size of fists. Disoriented, I braked hard—and the bike immediately slewed sideways into a skid. I struggled to stay upright, holding the throttle partway open as my rear wheel danced across the broken surface. For an instant the tire regained traction—but then it slipped back into the skid. Despite my efforts, the bike tilted closer and closer to the rocks speeding past. Then the rear tire caught hold again. The bike spurted forward just long enough and just upright enough for me to release the throttle and brake both wheels.
In the end, I still dumped the bike. But not until I'd come nearly to a stop.
In the abrupt quiet I lay on my back across the broken rocks, the bike's handlebars pinning my legs, its headlight shining skyward. Both wheels spun lazily. I shut off the motor, then lifted the handlebars to release myself. I turned the light toward the nearby ground.
My arm—my good arm—had been scraped up quite a bit, and one leg was bloody with shallow scratches. But I seemed to be basically intact. And the bike, apart from a few dents, looked undamaged, too.
Even with all the pebbles and rocks, lying down felt remarkably good. I thought about resuming my journey but couldn't muster a convincing argument. If I didn't catch a few hours of sleep, my next accident could easily turn out much worse. Besides, to avoid overrunning my headlight I'd been keeping my speed down all night—I could make much better time if I waited for daylight before continuing.
I left the bike on its side—no harm in keeping a literal low profile out here—and pulled my bag from the pannier to serve as a pillow. Under the overcast sky, the unmoving air still held some of the day's heat; wrapped in the emergency blanket, I figured I could manage to sleep. I pushed rocks aside and adjusted my position until I was reasonably comfortable, then flipped off the headlight.
And became blind. Without stars or city glow, there was simply no light anywhere. Maybe a miner or farmer wouldn't have cared—but I was a town dweller, and for me the impenetrable blackness was foreign and frightening.
I shut my eyes tight, trying to pretend that beyond my lids lay a world of streetlamps and light switches. And that I had to keep my eyes shut because ... ah! Because someone was watching me. Someone I had to convince that I was sleeping.
This proved to be a less inspired pretense than I initially thought. Soon I found myself listening intently for evidence of my supposed observer. Tiny, indistinct sounds in the distance amplified themselves under the focus of my attention, until finally my too-long-awake brain grew sure that some large, stealthy creature was creeping toward me. I opened my eyes—and panicked at the complete darkness. I flailed for the headlight switch.
Once the light spilled across the rocks, my panic quickly subsided, leaving me feeling rather stupid. But I'm not one to deny the existence of her inner idiot—if I were going to catch any sleep at all tonight, clearly it was going to take something more concretely reassuring than an imaginary observer.
I unwrapped the tape holding the hunting rifle to my bike. After spending a few minutes making sure I was familiar with the gun's basic control menus, I reached over and turned off the headlight.
Hugging the rifle with both arms, this time I did finally fall asleep, the rifle's display pulsing pale blue like some guardian fairy.
* * * *
I'm not sure which sound woke me—one of the high-pitched tremolo shrieks, or the basso rumbling growl. The night was still opaquely dark when my eyes snapped open. But the urgent animal cries, though clear, sounded safely distant.
I folded out the rifle's display and set the scope to night vision. Holding the gun in shooting position, I rose onto one knee and aimed.
About two hundred meters from me, the two creatures poised in the display's monochromatic pseudo-daylight looked unevenly matched. The larger, according to the scope's estimate, stood nearly three meters tall. Its tail lashed angrily as it retreated on its four stamping feet, both pairs of its fore-claws scything downward at its opponent. That opponent's squat body stretched barely two meters long, though half of that length seemed to be snapping jaws.
The short one's growl surged as it launched itself through the air—its brown stripes clear in my mind, if not in the night-vision display—and took a huge bite from the other's belly. The tall creature let out a final shriek, then stood unmoving for a few seconds before collapsing boneless to the ground. The croc waddled in and began a vigorous meal.
The savage brevity of the encounter left me shuddering. Panic returned then, and I hoisted the rifle and pivoted in a quick circle—followed by a second, more careful one—peering into the display for any glimpse of additional predators.
Reassured, for the moment, that the night held no threats other than the distant croc, I resumed my previous pose. The animal still dined; its repast, I guessed, would continue for some time yet. I assumed the croc would then lurch off to its lair—soon, I hoped, before the arrival of dawn. With any luck I wasn't camped on the route to that lair.
I kept watch for half an hour, my tiredness forgotten each time those great jaws yanked out another ragged morsel. Finally the croc lay still for a few minutes. Then it lumbered up onto its several feet. I held my breath, waiting to see in which direction it would set off.
But the croc just stood there. Then it began waggling its snout from side to side. After several seconds of this, it stopped and remained still for another moment. And then it turned and looked directly into my scope.
I gasped, nearly dropping the rifle. Fumbling in the dark, I disabled the safety and activated the autosight. Several very long, very bad seconds elapsed before I could find the croc again. When its pale image reappeared in the display, the croc was taking careful, deliberate steps straight toward me.
I tried to steady my arm against my knee, tried to calm my trembling with a slow, deep breath. I'd have to aim manually—red icons at the edge of the display indicated that the croc was out of range for ultrasonic targeting and wasn't warm enough or moving fast enough for the night-vision sight to automatically distinguish from the landscape. So, trying to recall teenage survival-training lessons, I half filled my lungs and held my breath, and eventually managed to steady the s
ight's laser onto the croc. The tiny dot of light danced up the animal's snout, settled just above its eyes.
Abruptly, this memory: Leaning against the wall of a dimly lit room filled with quiet breathing and snores. My colleagues, I think sleepily. My comrades. A pale red dot is moving across the forehead of the woman slouched in a chair across from me; I wonder from where in the rotunda of City Hall such a graceful beam of red light might arise. And then there's blood and loud gunshots from all directions and screaming, and someone falling against me knocking me to the floor.
I screamed now, I think, as I grabbed the trigger. The rifle's recoil shoved me off balance. Frantic, I pointed the rifle back into the night, peering into the display as I searched everywhere for the croc.
I finally found it, tens of meters farther away from me than before and rapidly increasing its distance each second. Whether it was my wild shot or my scream that had identified me, apparently noisy, armed humans didn't appeal to this particular croc.
Laying the rifle on the ground before me, I collapsed onto both knees. And began sobbing—but not out of relief.
Because I wasn't kneeling on the cracked and scattered rocks of a desert night. No, I lay stretched across a smooth, polished floor, terrified and helpless amid shrieks and falling bodies and concussive bursts of light. I lay in a room whose door, a decade and a half ago, would swing open before me every night when I tried to sleep, and every day when a loud noise or sudden flash of light caught me off guard. All these years I'd been reinforcing my barricades against that door and training myself to look away whenever I accidentally wandered near. In the past decade I had avoided all but the briefest glimpses into that room.
But now, an hour before an eighteen-years-later dawn, it was as if I'd never left City Hall. Again and again came the shouted commands, the smells of blood and excrement, the hard boot kicking my ribs. And through it all: my terror at the forces descended upon us. My helplessness to defend myself. My guilt for failing to protect my colleagues—my friends—who died when I didn't.
Sobbing, I sagged forward until my head rested against the ground.
If the Committee Police had wanted to, they could have simply fired a few shots over our heads and then marched us out at gunpoint, with no loss of life. But no, they needed to send a message to future would-be rebels. And that message was framed in the bodies of my dead comrades—the comrades I'd always pictured as courageous and powerful, but who I now recognized as young, naive idealists, with no means to defend themselves—even if someone had shouted a last-minute warning.
I dried my face on my sleeves, then picked up the rifle and scanned the night all around me. Satisfied that no new threats were creeping my way, I settled into a less uncomfortable position to await the dawn.
And only then did I realize that just now I had simply stepped out from the room of my nightmares. I'd never done that before. Yet if I turned to look back through that still-open doorway, the memories remained clear and immediate. I felt as much terror as always, and—huh—almost as much helplessness. But the ever-present guilt, to my surprise, I could no longer locate at all.
I sat there among the broken stones and thought about that.
After a while, violet light began spilling over the horizon's low hills, and the dry, dusty air around me stirred as if the world were drawing in the day's first hesitant breath. I retrieved one of the water pouches from the bike and sipped it as I watched low clouds slowly brighten from rust to apricot.
Soon there was enough light for me to make out a dark, irregular mound lying across the rocks about two hundred meters off. Even without the rifle's scope I could discern small movements that must have been scavengers, probing what the croc had left behind.
Which made me recall my own scavengers—who were, I hoped, only now waking in Glendora. I finished my water and picked up the gun. As I packed everything back onto the bike, I began to wish that before leaving town last night I'd thought to grab some of the rover's food packs.
Well, I'd be arriving at Matthew Johnson's research station soon enough. Maybe he'd offer me breakfast.
* * * *
From the front, anyhow, the station was smaller than I'd expected—a rough-walled ceramic building no bigger than a few habs pushed together, several wire-fenced pens, a few sheds. A rover sat by what I took for the main entrance; I parked my bike beside it.
I couldn't find a buzzer contact, but the door was unlocked. I pushed it open and called, “Dr. Johnson?"
No one answered. I stepped inside, into a small alcove where a collection of dusty shoes and boots covered a third of the stone floor. A couple of high-collared storm coats hung from metal hooks screwed into the walls, their leather surfaces cracked from wind and time.
I walked past the coats into what was apparently the station's living room. The beige-painted walls held maybe two dozen image-frames, each showing a different group of grinning, grimy people dressed for fieldwork. I found Rafe in two of the pictures. Four comfortable-looking armchairs defined a square around a low table; the debris from someone's recent meal was stacked in the only corner of the table not scattered with data crystals. Two doorways led from the room—through one I could see a refrigerator and an oven; the other revealed only the ends of some sheet-metal shelves.
I called Johnson's name again, then repeated it louder. Finally, from the second doorway a voice—like rusty iron dragged across sandstone—called, “Well, don't just stand out there. Come into the lab!"
Wondering whether he'd taken me for someone else, I stepped around the table and chairs and through the doorway.
It was like walking into the university's biology department. Two high, stone-countered workbenches stretched away from me down the length of the brightly lit room. A row of tall shelving units and storage cabinets lined each side wall. Most surfaces held neat arrays of laboratory equipment—pipettes, probes, culture dishes, heating and cooling units, and plenty of other objects I couldn't identify. The skeletons of several small animals were on display, as were the bones of some much larger creature looming in the room's far corner.
A scent of hot sand and a sudden scuttling sound drew my attention to the wall beside me. Wire cages and glass terrariums were stacked nearly to the ceiling. Scaly animals—some as small as my thumb, others the length of my forearm—stared back at me, displaying extravagant multicolored frills and ridges, mouths full of tiny teeth, and generally too many appendages.
"I'm out of skin cement,” the raspy voice said. “There's a big bottle in the blue cabinet beside you."
Wearing a lab coat of almost the same beige as the walls, he stood hunched over his workbench near the room's other end. Wire cages sat on the counter to either side of him; I couldn't see what he was working on.
"Well?” he asked, without turning from whatever he was doing. “This helioskolex isn't going to heal on its own!"
The cabinets along the side wall nearer me were each painted a different color. I opened the azure one and found a large glass bottle half full of purple liquid, neatly hand labeled “Skin Cement.” I carried it down the aisle between the benches, set it onto the counter beside him.
Johnson still matched his old images, though his tight-curled hair had grown grayer and his skin even craggier. Lying on the bench before him was a row of metal instruments—scalpel, tweezers, scissors and such—and also a legless creature a few centimeters long, with something brown and shiny bulging from a small incision in its belly.
Without looking at me, Johnson opened the bottle and poured some of its contents into a small, wide-mouthed jar. He dipped a swab into the jar, then used that to paint the edges of his patient's cut. With tweezers he pulled the incision closed; the purple edges stuck together as if magnetized.
He lifted the creature and held it close before his eyes for a few seconds, ignoring its feeble squirms. After a satisfied grunt, he dropped it into the cage on his right, where it landed atop a pile of others of its kind.
The cage to his left
held two more of the creatures. He reached in for his next victim, and then—still without looking my way—said, “Thanks. So who the hell are you?"
"Jenna Dalmas. I'm investigating something.” I peered over his shoulder as his scalpel opened another belly. “What are you doing to these guys?"
He snorted. “Why—did their mother hire you to investigate me?” He finally turned his head my way. “Damn! What the hell happened to you?"
I glanced down at my scraped, scabbed limbs, my battered clothes. I shrugged. “Let's just say that I could use a better travel agent."
He eyed me a moment longer, then grunted and turned back to his bench. Lifting a beaker full of brown glass beads, he said, “Radio trackers.” He rattled them, then plucked one out with a pair of tweezers and popped it into the animal. “Doesn't hurt a bit."
"Not going in, maybe."
He ignored my comment as he applied the purple cement. “Big controversy about how far from the nest these larvae get before their final molt."
"Really."
"Oh yeah.” He dropped the creature into the right-hand cage. “Affects the whole ecological model."
Neither of us said anything else as he tagged the final little animal. Then he gathered up his tools and carried them to a sink at the end of the bench. He washed them with practiced efficiency, setting them out to dry on a pyramidal black wire rack. He glanced my way. “Would you count up those leftover trackers for me? Just dump ‘em out on the bench."
With a shrug, I poured them out, and then pushed the beads around with both hands until they packed themselves into a rectangle. Five rows of six beads each. “Thirty,” I told him.
"There's a paper beside that cage, with the number when I started. Write down your number, and then the difference."
If this was supposed to be some sort of test, it was certainly starting out easy enough. I slid his paper toward me. It bore a series of hash marks—but they were a strange mess. Here and there were the standard four vertical ticks with a slash. But more often he had put down some random number of ticks—three, eight, six—and the diagonal slashes occasionally came in pairs.
Analog SFF, December 2007 Page 21